Super KEKB / Belle II Project

We present the status of the KEKB collider and the Belle detector upgrade, along with several examples of physics measurements to be performed with Belle II at Super KEKB.Comment: Presented at Les Rencontres de Physique de la Vall\'ee d'Aoste, La Thuile 201

Effect of nuclear interactions of neutral kaons on CP asymmetry measurements

We examine the effect of the difference in nuclear interactions of ${K}^0$ and $\bar{K}^0$ mesons on the measurement of CP asymmetry for experiments at $e^+e^-$ colliders - charm and $B$-meson factories. We find that this effect on CP asymmetry can be as large as 0.3%, and therefore sufficiently significant in interpreting measurements of CP asymmetry when neutral kaons are present in the final state.Comment: accepted to PR

Studying patterns of use of transport modes through data mining - Application to U.S. national household travel survey data set

Data collection activities related to travel require large amounts of financial and human resources to be conducted successfully. When available resources are scarce, the information hidden in these data sets needs to be exploited, both to increase their added value and to gain support among decision makers not to discontinue such efforts. This study assessed the use of a data mining technique, association analysis, to understand better the patterns of mode use from the 2009 U.S. National Household Travel Survey. Only variables related to self-reported levels of use of the different transportation means are considered, along with those useful to the socioeconomic characterization of the respondents. Association rules potentially showed a substitution effect between cars and public transportation, in economic terms but such an effect was not observed between public transportation and nonmotorized modes (e.g., bicycling and walking). This effect was a policy-relevant finding, because transit marketing should be targeted to car drivers rather than to bikers or walkers for real improvement in the environmental performance of any transportation system. Given the competitive advantage of private modes extensively discussed in the literature, modal diversion from car to transit is seldom observed in practice. However, after such a factor was controlled, the results suggest that modal diversion should mainly occur from cars to transit rather than from nonmotorized modes to transi

Light dark forces at flavor factories

SuperB experiment could represent an ideal environment to test a new U (1) symmetry related to light dark forces candidates. A promising discovery channel is represented by the resonant production of a boson U, followed by its decay into lepton pairs. Beyond approximations adopted in the literature, an exact tree level calculation of the radiative processes $e+ e- \rightarrow \gamma, U \rightarrow \mu^+ \mu^- \gamma, e^+ e^- \gamma$ and corresponding QED backgrounds is performed, including also the most important higher-order corrections. The calculation is implemented in a release of the generator BabaYaga@NLO useful for data analysis and interpretation. The distinct features of U boson production are shown and the statistical significance is analysed